


100 Themes Challenge #10 - Garden

by Yunimori



Series: 100 Themes Challenge [10]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: 100 Themes Challenge, Drabble, Gen, Holoforms (Transformers), Hope, Reflection, Short One Shot, Transformers as Humans, internal debate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-25
Updated: 2019-10-25
Packaged: 2021-01-03 07:03:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21175385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yunimori/pseuds/Yunimori
Summary: 100 Themes Writing Challenge.Please read tags for possible issues. 100 Themes Challenge drabbles may not have a proper summary.Timeline of going from despair over Cybertron to hope for it.





	100 Themes Challenge #10 - Garden

**Author's Note:**

> I'm copying all of my Shockwave and Optimus/Shockwave ficlets and drabbles from my tumblr accounts over to my ao3 account. Most of these are going to be incredibly short (hence the drabble tag), and either in short-form format or 100 Themes Challenge format.
> 
> This is just for my own peace of mind, making sure they are safe from tumblr's random purges.
> 
> However, feel free to read them and let me know if you enjoyed them!

It had been green, once. That’s what he’d been taught, what he’d been shown in old images and videos from long before he was born. Cybertron hadn’t always been a steel skeleton covered in dust and hard, cracked ground. Once, the life of Primus had flowed through the planet. Once it had been _green_, and Primus’ children had been forged with a metal body and an organic spark, to live alongside not only the mechanical, but the biological, coexisting as one.

Their sparks were still organic; light and fire and electricity, blood and soul. Their bodies, still mechanical: steel and iron, silver and bismuth, copper and bronze, tin and aluminum. But they had been reduced, now. A world of steel bones and dry dust was survivable, but it was not what they were meant for. 

Most of the old ones had forgotten. Those who hadn’t, once upon a time told stories. The young ones had never known anything but their dead world listened, but didn’t understand. The even younger ones didn’t even have the stories that the elders had once told. 

In the half a minute that Shockwave had stood still, nerves preventing him from stepping out of the hangar where the warp gate was positioned, that thought had run through his mind, paralyzing him further. 

He knew he was hated on Earth. He was almost _universally_ hated, by any races that the Cybertonians had come in contact with during the War. That alone was enough to make him nervous; but adding the thought of what he might see outside the hangar, after being so used to the dead wasteland that was his home planet, kept his feet still far longer than they should have been.

Hate he could deal with. He didn’t _want_ to be hated, his soul was too gentle for it, but he could _deal_ with it. He didn’t know if he could deal with seeing a world that was what his own was _supposed _to look like, if on a smaller scale. 

Shockwave had been one of the young ones that had never known anything but a dead, decaying world. He hadn’t understood the things he saw in glimpses of old still images, old video clips that were warped and staticky with age. All he knew is that seeing them had provoked a longing in him that he couldn’t figure out, something that hurt even after his mind had been taken from him, leaving another empty hole deep down inside. 

He recalled his former time on Earth, under Skywatch’s control, but he didn’t remember greenery. Didn’t remember anything about the terrain he’d been made to cross, his mind forced onto a single track that he could not deviate from lest the bomb in his chest send him into oblivion. He’d tried, forcing himself to relive that absolute nightmare, but for the life of him, he could recall nothing beyond his commands and the faces of humans who, like Megatron, had only wanted to use him as a tool.

So what if? What if? 

The sound of birds were what finally made him step outside, into the sunlight, and let his eyes adjust to the much brighter world outside of the military hangar. Hearing the cheerful chirping startled him into action where his own thoughts could not. 

Greenery met Shockwave’s eyes, along with desert-brown, but even the _desert_ wasn’t dead. As far as he could see, Shockwave’s eyes were met with colour and _life_ unlike anything back on Cybertron. Plants bloomed under the early spring sun, trees had already put forth their leaves, sending bright dots of green up that startled Shockwave with their suddenness. And the birds. 

The sound of the birds. 

They were everywhere. He could see them flying, dark little shapes that swooped over the base’s tarmac, across fences and into the trees and cacti just outside. And they _sang_, a riot of voices each with their own tune, but somehow managing to blend together into something that was strangely beautiful. It almost made tears come to his eyes. This world was _alive_, swelling with it, almost to bursting.

Finally, finally he understood. And it made him _ache_ for the understanding. 

He didn’t cry, though. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t. Cybertron had been dead for too long to mourn now, and he’d never known anything but that death. There was no sense in believing Cybertron could ever be this way; it would only hurt more if he mourned.

He wouldn’t cry then. It would take a few more years for that; a few more years and a lot more aching later. The first time he was allowed up on the wall around Metroplex to see the bright green forest spreading out from Iacon’s ruins, the work of the child demi-goddess brought back to life to bring their planet back from ruin.

_Then_, he would cry. Then, he would believe.


End file.
